(organization)=
# Shift organisation

The postgraduate team working on Ask-JGI are expected to work
collaboratively to manage the Ask-JGI mailbox. This activity has been
designed to allow ad-hoc working, so that queries can be picked up
within the constraints of Ask-JGI student PhD studies and other
work/university commitments. 

To make sure that there is always at least one team member checking
the Ask-JGI mailbox a throughout the day, Ask-JGI students are
required to sign up for so-called [Ask-JGI shifts](signup). 
Students on shift will keep the rest of the team up-to-date at Weekly
meetings. 

Ask-JGI shifts will be undertaken by Ask-JGI team members in **two week** blocks.
There tends to be one Ask-JGI team member on shift at any one time, but occasionally when there have been lots of queries, there have been 2 people on shift at once.

For each two week shift block, a base salary of 2 hours (1 hour per week), will be paid.
This is to cover the monitoring of the Ask-JGI mailbox/Teams channel and attendance at the weekly Ask-JGI [meetings](meetings).

(tasks)=
## Shifter tasks

The following tasks are expected of Ask-JGI team members while they are on shift:
1. Each shift block begins officialy on a Wednesday 
   (but in practice on the Tuesday meeting the day before).
2. On the Tuesday meeting you might want to ask the previous
   shifter if they have anything to hand over.
3. You are expected to monitor the [Ask-JGI
  mailbox](https://outlook.office.com/mail/ask-jgi@bristol.ac.uk/inbox) at least once per day, checking for any new queries or any follow-up emails from past weeks.
4. Any new queryies received in the mailbox should be 
   [shared on the Ask-JGI Teams channel](share-queries-Teams).
5. You are expected to monitor the Ask-JGI Teams channel
   throughout the day in case of any important messages. This is also
   where you can post any new queries that you would like input on, or
   that you would like to offer up to other Ask-JGI team members to
   participate in.
   </br>
   ```{tip}
   Remember that the Staff Data Scientists, AI and Research Software Engineers are on the Teams channel too,
   and they can offer advice and pointers on any query that you need help
   with.
   ```
   </br>
6. While they are on shift, Ask-JGI team members should report on
   the status of the mailbox and any ongoing queries at the [weekly meetings](meetings).

7. For any query that you pick up, you are responsible for filling out
   the [Ask-JGI
   tracker](https://uob.sharepoint.com/teams/grp-jeangoldinginstituteteam/Lists/AskJGI%20tracker/) 
   as per the instructions [here](filler). It is
   important to keep this up to date to reflect the status of all
   mailbox queries.

  ```{note}
   When there are no queries, there may be other work that needs
   to be done. Check the notes from the last team meeting for any tasks, or feel free to 
   ask the Ask-JGI team lead on [the Ask-JGI Teams Channel](communicating-teams).
   ```

## Handling lots of queries

The number of queries each week can be quite variable (sometimes none, but sometimes in the double digits!). 
We expect that the person on shift handles 1-2 queries depending on their capacity, and that the rest of the queries are handed around to other Ask-JGI team members. When the person on shift receives new queries, it’s good to post them onto the Ask-JGI teams channel. You can just post the subject of the query and a brief summary (in some cases you can just copy and paste the email text). If you want to pick up a query, you can just reply to the thread and say. At each weekly meeting, unassigned queries from the week before should be assigned. Queries can be assigned to more than one person, but we usually try to limit it to two people. If the query needs more than two people to be completed, it’s probably too big to be an Ask-JGI query.

For each query, up to one day of support (7 hours) is freely available to University of Bristol staff and PhD students in all faculties and departments. 

When a query is picked up, Ask-JGI team members should report the number of hours spent addressing that query, and they will be paid at the usual rate.